How to choose an industry to begin your career

Posted on January 23, 2012 by V

In my short life and even shorter working experience, I have come to identify a distinct pattern in the advancement of corporate careers. In that interest to note and absorb how some talented and ambitious executives have made their mark on the industry, I have also come to observe the underlying patterns that some of these executives have had in their favor at the beginning of their career. The three most influential factors outside a person’s control that determine his success are : Industry, Function and Location.

To begin with, let me describe my observations with regard to the “Industry” that a fresh graduate could choose so as to optimize his career in the long run.

To be as simplistic as possible as I can in order to explain this, I would confidently say that one should choose an industry in which the founders of the industry are alive and running the system.

Why?

Consider three people swimming from Point A to Point B.

Assume Person1 to be swimming in a stagnant lake, Person2 in a river and Person3 in a flood with his direction. Which one would you suppose would reach B in the shortest possible time. It is quite obvious.

1) So the analogy here is that An industry where the founders are alive and at the top is like a flood. It will quite naturally take a talented person to the top along with its rate of growth. Think Clean-tech( Ex: Suzlon ) , Social media networking, software as a service ( Cloud computing). These are the industries that are bound to be more entrepreneurial, have exponential growth and as a result throttle one’s career into a startling trajectory along with the adoption of the industry into the mainstream economy.

ii) Whereas the industry analogous with the aforementioned river is where the founders are either dead and the first generation caretakers are at the helm or the founders are about to exit the industry. The rate of growth will be fast here but not as much as in the first case, but the momentum is quite significant to retain its growth for at the least another generation. Think Software as a product( Infosys) , Consumer electronics ( the quintessential example being Apple), Management consulting, Financial services.

iii) And finally the lake; the industries with its founders long dead and where the caretakers are at the helm for quite a while now ( in some cases two or three generations ahead). While industries like these are quite slow in their growth and advancement, it is also these industries which are the most rife with innovation opportunities and creative destruction  ( See Shipserv revolutionizing the maritime industry with E-commerce). Think FMCG, Infrastructure, Construction industry, transportation sector, Oil and Energy, Entertainment. These are places where an entrepreneur could shake up the system by disrupting the “tried and tested but inefficient” systems and processes, essentially opening up globules of opportunity. (See Berkshire Insurance, slowly but steadily disrupting the traditional Indian insurance industry).

But apparently being in the right industry at the right time, as monumentally significant as it may be,  is not half as important as being in the right functional role, about which I will express my views in another post.

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Democracy, as we know it.

Posted on January 15, 2012 by V

Vaclav Havel was a Czech revolutionary and a playwright who passed away recently. But his words, as priceless as they are, are resounding in the face of Indian democracy as they were of the Czech political system.

The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.

Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.”

-Power of the Powerless, Vaclav Havel (1936 – 2011)

Post-totalitarian or democracy, whatever it may be, the slow abyss that the nation is spiraling into holds good, unless the apparently “powerless” do something about it.

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The chance to be thankful

Posted on November 25, 2011 by V

Talegaon, is a village that makes it all look so easy.

Be it climbing a small hill on a Sunday afternoon with friends or cycling 10 miles by a lake side to the town, the place never lets you feel tired. And I love it for that. But the one thing that it makes really hard for one is to wake up early on a cold misty morning.

But I did it sometimes. Some cold mornings in the monsoons of 2007, I woke up to the drizzles on my hostel room windows and lazily wiped off a few drops from my wooden court shoes, packed up my squash bag and headed to the courts.

I would be all alone there on a Sunday morning, when the 1000 member strong hostel would be tightly cuddled to a blanket. But I went there precisely because I was all alone.

Squash , to me, was like falling in love serendipitously. All my life I had been prepared to marry this woman called “cricket” only to meet this girl called” “squash”, who would take my breath away as as quietly as she came into my life in 2004.

I loved the smell of the moist wood from the squash courts.

I loved the soft thumping sound of the ball against the wall and into my racket as I practiced my parallel shots. It was like meditation to me.

I even loved the feeling of a drenched T-Shirt as I got out of the court after every session.

I loved it all.

As I revisit yet another Indian monsoon, this time in Chennai after 4 years, I can not help but be nostalgic about how I could really use a game of squash right now just to get my spirits up and running.

Sometimes you just need to be thankful that you have something to help get your spirits up, that you have some friends to get you to see what life comes down to eventually, that you have family who can support you while you dare to achieve what your mind ideates and that you at least have the chance to be thankful.

For that , I am today.

Happy thanksgiving!

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To lead or to manage

Posted on November 17, 2011 by V

How do you get a much more experienced, technically qualified and older employee trust in what you say, all of 24 ; even if you’re quite accomplished in your previous field and have somehow gotten funded for your vision and your idea, but to manage the older employees who are specialists and to not bruise their egos in the process?

How would you do that?

I will answer that when I learn that.

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The hurdlers

Posted on November 7, 2011 by V

Some people consciously choose to try and create an organisation and do things entrepreneurially, not because they are easy , but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of their energies and skills, because that challenge is one they are willing to accept, one they are unwilling to postpone and one they intend to win.

And for that, I salute them.

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Stolen poetry : The open road

Posted on August 6, 2011 by V

No more shall I be tempted
By the welcoming road.

He who has no door
Cannot leave it open.

– Hu Ming-Xiang

Courtesy : Falstaff

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The weapon

Posted on July 31, 2011 by V

Take up all your regrets, all your failures, all that you could have been, all that you ever wanted to be and mix it into a beautiful concoction with what you want to be, your hopes, your ambitions , your desires, goals, dreams, naivetés and innocence.

Convert that concoction into a vengeance, an anger, a longing, an arrogance and an emotion. Dissolve in it, wade in it, surrender to it and look it in the eyes.

Prepare for it. Make it a weapon and keep it close to you.

Every challenge and every opportunity that you will come up against, make sure you pat your heart and say to yourself, “ I have a weapon. I can take this head on. I can take anything head on.”

And you most probably will.

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For a few kind words

Posted on June 27, 2011 by V
Note: Any reference or description relating to anyone living or dead is a coincidence only. The names of those involved have been changed to protect their actual identity.

For a Few Kind Words…

He seemed a good kid when I recruited him. He was sharp, young and oblivious to the way in which life is beheld in the merchant navy. He wanted to be a deck cadet. Let me call him Raj, for the sake of our convenience.

02_KIEP_MERCHANT_NA_280080fRaj was an ambitious kid from my point of view. “I want to be a Captain, sir”, he told me the moment he entered the interview hall. He was wearing a black tie with a blue shirt which seemed to complement his deep set green eyes and tall lanky frame.  For a kid whose mother had passed away at 10 and had to help raise two little sisters all on his own, he had done a pretty good job. He wanted to head to sea to educate his sisters and help his father out. I vividly remember his presence which seemed far beyond his years and an intelligence coupled with maturity that could have been easily mistaken for over confidence.

Two years later, on a cold winter morning, my Blackberry buzzed to life at 3 A.M.

“Sir, I am sending back the cadet. He has had some…..problems onboard and we cannot afford to have him here, lest risk commercial pressures of getting the ship arrested”, my captain called me from the vessel. As I proceeded deeper into an annoying conversation, I shook off my disbelief when I heard the words, “Sir, the kid tried to kill himself …….in US waters. We had to inform the port, his parents and you. The Chief Officer has reported his mental instability. He is being accompanied by a US Marine till he is in safe hands.”

I dazed off just a moment to remember Raj and wondered myself if the sea could really change a person to that extent. Wearily, I breathed soft reassurances to Raj’s troubled father over the phone and headed off to the airport to receive the kid.

Three hours later, I saw a glimpse of the sad green eyes that were once jubilant with enthusiasm. Accompanying him was a seven foot tall US Marine who sat as grim as he appeared when he had arrived. When I went on to thank him for his service. He greeted me with a surprisingly pleasant smile and assured me that he was just doing his duty and there was no need to go about thanking him. Just when I was about to leave, he wanted to have a word with me, “ Sir, I have escorted madmen ranging from psychosis patients to schizophrenics in my career and I guarantee you that the kid is mentally very stable but if you insist he is not, then he must be the most pleasant madman I have ever come across.”

As I handed over Raj to his father and headed home, I could not shake off the Marine’s words and how it coincided with so much of my own opinion about Raj’s mental condition. I had left him bundled in his father’s arms, tinged with a feeling of guilt. On the drive back home, I gazed out on to the dew covered prairies and tried to let go of the missing pieces in the story that my mind was battling with.” What happens on the ship stays on the ship”, I told myself.

Today, I am older by a year, not any wiser. A year since I forgot all about the day when I last saw Raj sobbing away only to drench his father’s shirt at the airport. I ran across him at the same airport at the same terminal. Fate or Irony! I’d dare not guess.

He fell to my toes asking for my blessings the moment he saw me. Embarrassed and pinched by a sharp sense of guilt, I went on to ask him how he was doing and how his father was. He tried unsuccessfully to withhold a sad smile and told me, “Sir, he died six hours after you left me at the airport a year ago. He could not take the shock that I was mentally unstable, especially when I was not. Sir, I was framed by the Chief Officer who had certain concerns about me. He ran after me onto the deck to hit me and trying to evade him, I fell overboard into the water. Saving himself, he reported a suicide attempt. That is all there is to it. ”

When I tried to process those words, I could not. I was too dazed to react to him. I bid him goodbye as he boarded his flight. I sat there for another hour at an isolated area of the terminal, long after collecting my bags, trying to absolve my self-doubt. But no matter how many times I told myself, “There was nothing you could have done”, my thoughts travelled to the orphaned sisters who were still in school and the green eyed brother who went out to sea to educate them.

A few kind words, those were all that he needed, be it sea or be it shore.

A few kind words, those that could have changed his life.

Image Credits:

thehindu, abc4

Posted in Such is life | 2 Comments

Media, Marketing and America

Posted on April 24, 2011 by V

Today morning I was reading an article about Donald Trump faking a run for president on TV. Why do you think anyone in this country should care so much about public figures or celebrities in America so much? Why is it that Paris Hilton is regularly featured and discussed in the Indian Media for her antics?

That got me to the point of thinking why it was the way it was. Why don’t we know anything South American companies or their politics or about prime ministers in Russia as well as we know about the Americans?

One may again argue that it’s because we were exposed to colonial British and thereby learning and using English extensively has a  direct bearing on why America has an influence on India and its youth. But if that was the case, the attention of over 1 billion Indians should be focused and biased towards the British or Australians for that matter. Why America?

Why had American universities like Harvard and Stanford become so popular than Oxford, Cambridge and the like in recent years? Why does an average Indian graduate know that Georgia Tech is good at teaching industrial engineering but doesn’t know about an equally attractive Indian program?

If I had to give an honest opinion, I would say that American media did a very good job marketing their country as the land of opportunities to the English speaking world ( and to a certain extent on the non-English speaking world as well). By repeatedly implying and analyzing the strengths of various faucets of their own nation ranging from education to industries like banking to even scrutinizing the functions of an American fighter jet on national TV, they have done a impressive job of making it a self-fulfilling prophecy which has attracted millions of bright minds from across the world and further propelled its growth.

Although, there may be an historical perspective to this. At the end of second world war, Britain having won it barely was in shambles and poverty. America, a nation on the brink of industrial development and prosperity as history would record it much later, demanded payments from Britain in gold. This gold and wealth was used by America to attract many of the bright minds from across the seas and not to mention,the talented refugees of the war, the likes of Dr. Victor Frankl from as far as Austria. The American media was an extremely useful tool in this pursuit and the portrayal of the country as a land of opportunities, the effects of which seem to have triggered a self sustaining cycle till date for attracting the best and the brightest.

America is an on-going example of “act like it is and it shall be”. Only recently have this trend started to decline with the so-called reverse brain drain but even with that in mind, I am yet to see anybody from a known circle of friends planning to return anytime soon. My best bet is that this generation shall return at one time or the other depending on their priorities and their individual definitions of being financially and prestigiously well settled. Its only a matter of time they come back but the exodus of freshly minted college graduates will continue for as long as  I can guess.

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On the Road to where?

Posted on April 18, 2011 by V

I move intent on crossing a mountain

breaking the climb into steps I can take

I cross small hills now and then,

With a pleasure and  a smile I dare not fake.

 

But will the climb lead to a peak I want to conquer,

Or is it the thrill of the conquest that I want to peak?

I pose these questions to the mirror in the face,

Only to  leave distant answers like the horizons that I chase.

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